Science Pipeline

The ALMA Science Pipeline has been developed with the goal of performing automated data processing before delivery to the user. It performs ALMA interferometric and single-dish data end-to-end processing (calibration and imaging).

1. ALMA Science Pipeline Software

The ALMA Science Pipeline is released as part of CASA, the Common Astronomy Software Applications package. Instructions for downloading and installing CASA are available from the Obtaining CASA site.

ALMA data should be able to be processed with a the same or a more recent version of the pipeline as was used for the original processing (which is reported in the README file in the archive as well as on the Home page of the WebLog). However, if problems arise you should try reprocessing using the exact same pipeline version as originally used. The official pipeline versions used at various times are reported in the Pipeline Version Tracker tables on this page.

2. ALMA Science Pipeline Documentation

The following table lists current (bold font) and past versions of the ALMA Science Pipeline User's Guide and Reference Manual.

A listing of pipeline limitations that are known at the time of the pipeline release is given in Section 2 of the current ALMA Pipeline User's Guide. The following table lists any additional issues which arise after the software release for a given cycle. It will be updated to denote whether an issue has been fixed and whether this fix has made it into an updated release.

Issue Number

Description

Period when pipeline products affected

Impact and Work-around?

Resolved?

Deployed Version

CAS-xxxx

4. ALMA Science Pipeline Version Tracker

The tables below list (1): the Pipeline+CASA versions run by ALMA Operations to calibrate & image ALMA data, and (2) the corresponding Pipeline+CASA versions available to users for restoring ALMA data. In general, pipeline tasks from any CASA release should run successfully on data from that cycle or earlier. Some differences will remain (e.g. the handling of system flags). To get the exact same results as an archived pipeline product, you should use the User version of CASA+Pipeline that corresponds to the Operations version used to produce the corresponding products.

The dates in this table should not be used to determine which Pipeline CASA version was used for the restoring and imaging of data in Operations. Please consult the README file in the data delivery or the version listed in the Home Page of the WebLog to determine which Pipeline CASA version was used.